41–50 of 369 posts
My 2c, is stop trying to be one nation then. The EU zone is something of a fiasco and its really killing the entire zone with countries like Turkey and Greece. Don't blame us .. blame your governing body for making it difficult to operate in Europe.
Turkey isn't in the EU.
This post feels awfully pedantic. While it may not be clear to non-Americans, when Americans talk about "Europe", they're generally talking about Western Europe, not Eastern, and are excluding the UK too. They almost certainly aren't including Russia. (Just like when Americans talk about Asia, they aren't usually thinking of India.) Of course, that's geographically inaccurate -- but it's what we usually mean. The Eur…
Otherwise you're right: When talking about europe, most western europeans don't include russia or respectively those part of russia that geographically belong to europe and most probably ukraine and other eastern european countries are not included as well.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, indeed they are. But they all share a common language. It's a bit like Germany, Switzerland and Austria or even the german states themselves. We all share a common language so it we've seen the same movies, read the same media, etc. Certainly it's on a larger scale than the german states, but it's on a smaller scale than europe. If I travel 200 km to the east I'm in Poland. My GF comes from a village close to th…
"But they all share a common language" Ha! You haven't been to Watsonville, California or just about anywhere along the border with Mexico, have you?
And I'm sure if you live in Watsonville, California, you can get your tax forms in English, right? This is definitly not the case within the whole of the EU and the EU offical languages. (e.g. someone in Ireland could not get their tax forms in Swedish).
This post feels awfully pedantic. While it may not be clear to non-Americans, when Americans talk about "Europe", they're generally talking about Western Europe, not Eastern, and are excluding the UK too. They almost certainly aren't including Russia. (Just like when Americans talk about Asia, they aren't usually thinking of India.) Of course, that's geographically inaccurate -- but it's what we usually mean. The Eur…
This doesn't hold true for any of the Americans I've met (and I've met a lot). Also, one of the countries Martin Varsavsky mentions in his examples is actually the UK.
If it were true that the American definition of Europe doesn't include Eastern Europe, what part of the world do the many Americans who visit Budapest believe they're in? Asia?
> The Europe that Americans refer to does mostly use the Euro, have better-distributed wealth, plenty of consumers, and ambivalent feelings toward entrepreneurs in most of its parts.
Western European countries that don't use the Euro: Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway (and then there's the UK, but of course that isn't part of your definition of Europe).
> Perhaps the main point of the post was, be aware that Eastern Europe exists?
No, the main point was, if you visit e.g. the UK, don't make general observations about Europe based on that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly this post is a perfect example. You've classified "Americans" as one group when your really talking about "American Nationalists". It sounds like your attributing nationalist propaganda you see on Fox News to all Americans. This is also a great example of state/city variation. Living in Boston for 7 years I can probably count the number of times I've heard someone talking about "The American Way" or using th…
I didn't say all Americans are that way, I just said some (rather loud, rather constant) Americans generalize themselves; while I don't quite get that vibe from Europe. Movies, presidential speeches, whatnot... it's really not just some nationalists, you export that a lot. That doesn't say anything about those who have no use for that stuff and see through it, I'm just claiming you have a lot of people who don't. I c…
I've met plenty of Europeans who were incredibly nationalistic from France, Great Britain, Austria, Czech, etc. and they are extremely vocal and proud of their national heritage/identity. They love telling people that they're French, English, Austrian, Czech, etc. but they never claim to be European.
Similarities could be drawn between the individual European countries and US states/regions (Texas is a prime example).
This post feels awfully pedantic. While it may not be clear to non-Americans, when Americans talk about "Europe", they're generally talking about Western Europe, not Eastern, and are excluding the UK too. They almost certainly aren't including Russia. (Just like when Americans talk about Asia, they aren't usually thinking of India.) Of course, that's geographically inaccurate -- but it's what we usually mean. The Eur…
Just like "America" is a synecdoche for "The United States". :) It depends on how the words are used; "Africa" to describe an area larger than a lot of continents combined, when you only mean a few countries - or just one! - is borderline offensive, though.
I was curious so here are some population figures (from wikipedia) Eurozone: 332,839,084 EU: 503,492,041 Europe: 739,165,030 So 45% of Europeans (66% of EU citizens) are in the Eurozone.
For those who don't know, the Eurozone is basically those 17 EU member states who use the Euro as their currency. The remaining 10 members of the EU use their own national currency.
(FTR: Kosovo and Montenegro use the Euro, aswell as some microstates like Monaco and Vatican City)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I addressed all that in my post. I never claimed that Americans were one homogenous group (and by the way, I've lived in California, too). I claimed that US, despite being a melting pot, is an actual nation (which is not the case with the EU) and that there are a least some common denominators - one of them being the language which is spoken natively by more than 80% of the population.
So how exactly is it imprudent or offensive for Americans to point out some of the common denominators of Europe?
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Have you followed the HN discussion about Varsavskys post? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4968589 He takes his experience from Spain and UK and glosses it all over europe with some hearsay in between. Some of his statements may apply to spain and the UK, but pretty much all of them don't apply in germany - even the ones about germany. So it's not an ad hominem attack when the author says "another one that falls…
No, actually, I hadn't; I'm nominally on vacation. What I'm about to say is intellectually sloppy. But Varsavsky's facts are not terribly important. His point about German startups was true at one time, and is no longer true, but his larger point about legal requirements for the workplace being strict in Europe and essentially non-existent in America is true. His contrast of personal liability for entrepreneurs in Eu…
In the UK an entrepreneur can set up a LTD company which limits personal liability.
The EU has had limited liability for traders since 1989.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_liability)
> In 1989, the European Union enacted its Twelfth Council Company Law Directive, requiring that member states make available legal structures for individuals to trade with limited liability. This was implemented in England and Wales by Statutory Instrument SI 1992/1699 which allowed single-member limited-liability companies.
This is just one small example of something which is factually incorrect. It's not a matter of opinion; it's not shades of grey; it's not one person's impressions of a country. A statement was made; that statement is wrong. There are many others in the original article.
Scattering these errors in an opinion piece gave it the feel of a shallow attack piece.
> His post is not directed towards Europeans. It is directed towards American entrepreneurs who are looking at Europe - and could come to Europe with vastly incorrect assumptions about what it means to start and run a business here.
They're definitely going to have vastly incorrect assumptions if they believe everything in that article!